Specify which local ip to give to my vm when I create or attach it. This way I can specify a series of dns servers and then actually have servers to apply those addresses to. This is also helpful when migrating servers since it will then maintain its addressing structure.

Right now, creating a new base image, configuring and uploading it is a VERY time consuming (and error prone) process. Please provide pre-built images that we can upload and use immediately or customize. It would be awesome to have them available inside the Azure management portal so we don't need to download/upload them, just reference what we need and presto.

Amazon has got this nice feature of providing variable costs based on their server load. You can get a VM going ONLY when the cost is lower that a certain threshold.
It makes perfect sense for a DB engine where lots of archiving, aggregating etc. is required and the user wants to be sure to stick to the budget.